The Interview
by elfmaiden4legs
Summary: A few years after retiring from the force Starsky and Hutch are interviewed for the local newspaper. Here they discuss what they have been up to since retirement, touching upon Starsky's shooting, and how their friendship has fared outside of the force.


**The Interview**

 **Interviewer:** Well let me start by saying that it's great to have you both here!

 **Starsky:** Thanks, it's great to be here.

 **Hutch:** Thank you.

 **I:** Well it's been a couple of years now since you two relinquished your partnership and retired, how have you adjusted?

 **S:** Well it's like anything else when you've been doing something for several years, and then suddenly it's not there anymore, it takes time to readjust, to find a new way of doing things, to adapt to a new daily routine. Being a cop is more than just a nine to five job, it changes your whole way of thinking, and to a certain extent you need to retrain the way you think otherwise there's a tendency to see suspicion in everyone and you just can't function like that, you'd burn yourself out, and so there comes a time when you just have to shut your mind off to the job, and concentrate on leading your life… of course it helps if you know you've got something to go on to, having something else to focus on keeps your mind off the job. I suppose we've both been lucky in that neither of us seems to have found it particularly difficult to readjust… most of the time in this line of work it comes down to making a choice, and when the time comes it's simply a case of weighing up the options your presented with at the time and making a decision.

 **H:** Yeah, it's like Starsky says, that decision is then ultimately yours, and no matter how you may feel about it in the future you can normally seek solace in the fact that at least you were given a choice. We've known so many men over the years, and some female officers of course, brilliant detectives who when it came down to it couldn't bring themselves to break their ties with the force, preferring to choose a desk job over taking early retirement, and the monotousness of the work after being used to the busy and frequently unpredictable life on the streets very nearly destroys them… when it came down to it both Starsky and myself realised that a desk job wasn't an option either of us could foresee for ourselves, and so that decision and the knowledge of the only other alternatives made it a lot easier to readjust to civilian life after the force.

 **I:** Ironically though this isn't the first time you've both taken retirement from the police force is it?

 **S:** Well no, we did resign once… you witness so much death, so much suffering as part of your line of duty, it got to the point where we couldn't pay that price anymore.

 **H:** As Starsky says, you get to see both the best and worst of humanity whilst doing this job, the guilt and the responsibility can eat away at you sometimes… but we couldn't stay away for long. When you become a cop to help people, it's in your blood, and no matter how much you may want to, even for your own sake or safety, you can't turn your back on that. Giving up was never really an option for either of us really.

 **I:** Well let me just take you both back to the beginning now, would you mind telling us how you both first met?

 **S:** It was at the police academy… although we didn't really know each other very well at the time.

 **H:** There weren't very many of us, I think it was during that stage that the academy were only taking on about twenty or so candidates a year, and conditions very much reflected those of the working environment. You were expected to get to know each other and make friends very quickly if you were going to get by… but it was still very difficult to know who you could trust, who your real friends were, because there were still those people who were only in it for what they could get out of it to enhance their own means.

 **S:** Hutch and I just seemed to hit it off right away though, we never really seemed to have to work very hard at our friendship, the pieces of the puzzle just seemed to slot quite nicely into place, and by our final week we were already quite close friends.

 **H:** It was during our final week that we were told about this job going in Bay City, looking for two new officers and open to graduates fresh out of the academy. We were told if we were interested to register our details with the departmental deputy. Well, I think about a dozen of us went for it, including about a hundred external applicants… I don't think neither I nor Starsk could really quite believe it when we were chosen for the job…

 **S:** … and that's when the seeds of friendship were really well and truly sewn.

 **H:** Because when you work the streets you've got to know each other inside out, what the other's thinking, what the other's feeling, what makes the other tick. It's a dangerous life for a cop out there, you've got to trust each other. You're frequently placing your life in the other's hands, you've got to know you can trust your partner.

 **I:** So is this what you've both always wanted to do, become a police officer?

 **S:** Absolutely, no doubt.

 **H:** It's like I was saying before, when you become a police officer in order to help people it's in the blood… I can't remember ever wanting to do anything else.

 **S:** Actually I tell a lie, I did used to want to be a train driver… I used to have all these train sets as a small boy. I remember my grandpa used to buy me a new carriage for every birthday and Christmas right up until the year that he died, and I remember always dreaming of driving a real one someday.

 **I:** A train driver?

 **S:** Yeah.

 _(Starsky nods, before bursting into laughter, closely followed by Detective Hutchinson.)_

 **I:** So, Hutch, we've already established what Starsky may very well of considered had he not become a police officer, what else is it you think you may have wanted to do had you not joined the force?

 **H:** Well, I've never really thought about it but music has always been very important to me. I learnt to play guitar as a young teenager, and started singing just shortly after that, so I suppose it would have been nice to have been given the opportunity to have done something with that.

 **I:** Right, getting back to the topic in hand now, what have you been doing since?

 **S:** Well, as I say it's a wrench to have done something which means so much to you for so many years, and then suddenly one day not be able to do that anymore, but it really helps to have something else to focus on, something in the pipe line, so that you have a plan and a target to aim for, and so me and Hutch decided before we'd even considered the prospect of retirement to set up our one detective agency… and then there's also been the offer of some teaching work at the local academy, which is also a promising prospect… but first I took a long holiday.

 **H:** Well we'd already tried finding normal jobs when we quit the force for the first time, and nothing ever worked out for us. When you work for the force for so long you become too geared up for the streets, it makes doing any other job rather difficult to adjust to, after a while you start to miss it, the pace and the unpredictability are what keep you sane, and what keeps you going, and so we decided to put our skills to good use, doing something we knew would also make a difference to people's lives. We'd spent so many years focusing all our efforts on protecting people, we didn't see why we had to stop then just because we weren't in the force anymore.

 **I:** And how has your partnership fared since?

 **S:** Well obviously our partnership as it used to be ended the day that we left the department, only so much in that we were no longer doing the job that we had been anymore though. When you're no longer placing your life in the hands of fate every day, you learn to relax a little, you no longer have to place such a huge amount of responsibility on each other's shoulders, but you still remain friends and our friendship is as strong as it ever was. When you work with somebody every day for the length of time that me and Hutch did you develop strong ties and friendships with the people you work with. These types of friendships, like the ones you make whilst on the force, are not so easily broken. Hutch is dearer to me than my own brother.

 **H:** It's like Starsky says, you almost become two halves of the same whole. Starsky is my best friend in this whole entire world, even now there isn't anybody else I'd trust more with my own life than him.

 **I:** You nearly died though didn't you Starsky? A few years ago now I recall, but the story dominated the news at the time. Something like that could easily frighten an officer from policing for life, but you both survived and returned to duty, how did such an incident affect you both?

 **S:** To be honest I think that it affected Hutch a lot more than if affected me. Even to this day I can't remember a great deal about the incident, although everything I've been told since has helped fill in some of the blanks… I remember the station parking lot, making my way over to my car, a sudden loud noise behind me, Hutch shouting for me to get down, and then nothing until I woke up in the hospital a week later. Apparently I made an attempt to reach for my gun, but I don't remember anything about that. Hutch went through a pretty hellish few days following that though, waiting for me to wake up in the hospital, not knowing whether or not I ever would, and all the time he was still having to investigate the case of who had initiated the attack upon the two of us. It placed him under a great deal of emotional pressure, and left him with a lot of baggage to have to work through afterwards… he stopped eating at one stage, and stopped sleeping, but I think the reason why we both survived was because it was just yet another thing for us to both work through together, and that's exactly what we did. He provided me with the strength and the support I needed to help me through physio and my physical recovery, and I was only too happy to provide an understanding ear and a shoulder to cry on during the difficult few months of his recovery from what had been a deep emotional trauma in return. I think the tendency is always there to blame yourself when something like this happens to your partner, you can somehow feel responsible, that you're in some way to blame… but I needed Hutch to understand that none of that was his fault, that there was nothing he could have done to have prevented what happened to me, and I think that when he finally started to accept that, only then did things start to resume some sort of normality again…

 **H:** It took us both some time to readjust. I suppose at the time I was suffering from some sort of post-traumatic stress disorder and I became very conscious of the fact that Starsky was going to need somebody that he knew he could trust to cover him once he returned to duty, and that placed a great deal of emotional pressure on me, especially as Starsky is also my best friend. But I realised that he needed me, and that the only way I could stop blaming myself for what happened was to be there to help him thorough his recovery… I didn't even realise myself at the time that I was sick. What followed were the most difficult few months of my life, I had to stand back and watch my best friend go through hours of painful and torturous physiotherapy, in the end the stress really began to take its toll on me… but neither of us were going to let that beat us, we'd already been through so much together and survived. When you work the streets you inevitably make enemies, enemies who wouldn't mind seeing you dead, and wouldn't think twice about putting a bullet into you. Somebody did those people a massive favour that day, and very nearly came close to succeeding where they'd previously failed. But me and Starsk decided that the only way through was to help each other through those difficult few months, and that's how we survived... such was, and still is, the power of our friendship.

 **I:** Such a moving story, you're both an inspiration to us all. Just a couple of final questions then, what advice would you give to somebody reading this, and considering joining the police force themselves?

 **S:** Just go for it, if it's something you really want to do, and you have put your heart and soul into that decision then you've just got to put everything you've got into achieving that and proving to everybody that you can do it, because it's hard and it's tough. It's a dangerous game, and you need to be prepared for that. You need to be willing to give your life up in place of another under any circumstance… but not be impulsive in making that decision. Being a cop is a huge responsibility, but if you've really thought about it, and there's still nothing else you'd rather do then well, I guess somebody has to be around to replace us old codgers when we can't do it anymore.

 **H:** Just be sure that you're going into it for all the right reasons… _(turning to Detective Starsky)_ Hey, and who are you calling old?

 **I:** And how about somebody considering retirement?

 **S:** Just remember that it's not the end, it's only the beginning.

 **H:** And you don't have to lose contact with all the people you love and care about. The friendship's you make whilst on the force are amongst the strongest, these are the types of friendships that will last a lifetime, and survive trial and adversity. As I have already said Starsky has been my best friend for years and still remains so even to this day.

 **S:** And Hutch is mine.

 **I:** Well, thank you for taking the time to come here today and answer a few questions for us.

 **S:** It's been a pleasure.

 **H:** No problem.

 **I:** Thank you.


End file.
